The earliest international student identified in the records of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville is one Mr. Stamas S. Trikaliotis of Greece, who was awarded an M.A. degree in 1844.[1] It was not until the middle of the twentieth century, however, that international students began coming in significant numbers to the banks of the Tennessee River for their higher education. Indeed, since World War II many thousands of students from outside the United States have earned degrees at this institution or, as participants in one-or-one exchanges, transferred credits back to their home institutions abroad from their semester or year spent in Knoxville. Spurred by the establishment of the headquarters of the Tennessee Valley Authority in Knoxville during the 1930s and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory nearby in the 1940s, the faculty of UT Knoxville became particularly actively involved in international research and development projects since shortly after World War II. American students from Tennessee have gone to travel, work and study in other countries each year over the past sixty or so years.
Campus-based services for international students at UT Knoxville were brought together in the 1960s under the direction of Nelson Nee and, later, of Dixon Johnson. It was during that decade that the university’s first International House was established, occupying a former single-family dwelling in the Fort Sanders area at the edge of campus, as a meeting place for students from abroad. In the 1970s Professor Nelson Robinson, assisted by Nancy McCormack (now McGlasson), developed an Office of Study Abroad which later was to become the Division of International Education. Central administrators at UT Knoxville, meanwhile, signed agreements of mutual cooperation with overseas institutions.
The UT Institute of Agriculture, following a decade of successful involvement with the development of agricultural education (and with the establishment of an agricultural university in India), received US Title XII support for building internal competence in international activities. The UT Space Institute—situated in Tullahoma, Tennessee, but administratively a part of UT Knoxville—established a still-functioning exchange of lecturers and students with Germany’s Technishe Hochschule Aachen. Student exchange schemes were entered into, providing opportunities for Tennessee students to change places for a year or semester with students from Britain, Ireland, Germany and, later, with many other countries through active membership in the International Student Exchange Program (“ISEP” is a student exchange consortium of approximately 230 universities and colleges, half in the US and half outside). Since October 1975 the development of international education at UTK has been guided by the Statement on International Education, a policy pronouncement adopted by the UT Board of Trustees, the governing body for the entire University of Tennessee System.
During the early 1980s the pace of international activity at UT Knoxville increased markedly. In 1980 the university became a member of the Southeast Consortium for International Education (SECID). During the next year the UT Board of Trustees approved a “Proposal for Reciprocal Student Exchange Programs,” clearing the way for one-on-one student exchange programs, and the Faculty Senate created an International Education Committee.
The year 1982 witnessed not only the establishment of the International Agricultural Board at the UT Institute of Agriculture but also the laying of the groundwork for a new UT Knoxville administrative unit, the Center for International Education (CIE). In April of that year 120 people from near and far were invited by the Chancellor to a conference entitled Strategies for Developing International Education at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville to discuss a 34-page discussion paper which had been developed over the preceding eleven months by a Conference Planning Committee. The conference led directly to the establishment later that year of the Council on International Education, an advisory body of the UT Knoxville Chancellor, and to the creation of the CIE eighteen months later. Also during 1982, the UT Knoxville campus formally adopted its Guidelines on Foreign Student Enrollment—that, while still viewed in the admissions offices as an ideal for which to strive, are no longer strictly applied.
In 1983 the Role and Scope Committee, made up of students, staff, faculty and administrators, studied the question of how international education should best be conducted at UT Knoxville and formally recommended the creation of the Center For International Education. CIE became a reality with the appointment, following a national search, of David C. Larsen—who later became Vice President of Arcadia University—as the unit’s first permanent Director in September 1984.
Also in 1983 UT Knoxville moved into its second International House. Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Howard Aldmon had secured a former family home, built circa 1900, at 1515 Cumberland Avenue as the new International House. Situated directly across Cumberland Avenue from the Carolyn P. Brown University Center building (and also from CIE’s main offices in Alumni Hall, later renamed Aconda Court) and also between the College of Law and the Panhellenic Building, the second “I-House” was much closer to the campus proper. The new facility offered 3,577 usable square feet divided into twenty rooms. Then-Acting Vice Chancellor Phillip Scheurer secured funds to double I-House operating monies and to provide for a graduate assistant. A director was hired, initially into a three-quarter-time position and, later, a full-time one.
Although the new International House’s name remained the same as the first I-House, its undergirding philosophy had changed. The 1983 Role and Scope Committee had charged the I-House to serve all UTK students (not just foreign nationals), the UTK faculty and staff and the greater Knoxville community, and to develop programming which would reflect this change. The I-House thenceforward was meant to provide ample opportunity for people of every nationality—including Americans—to meet. No longer was it to be seen merely as a haven for students from other lands.
The new CIE—which initially reported simultaneously to Vice Chancellor for Students Affairs Phillip A. Scheurer and to Provost George Wheeler (via Associate Provost and Dean of the Graduate School C.W. Minkel)—quickly established itself on campus as a catalyst for international activities at every level. Services to international students and scholars increased: exchange and study-abroad programs for US students increased in general across campus, the I-House was active, and interest by faculty and staff in international research and exchange rose sharply. New collaborations on special projects took place with such outside organizations as the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Hubert H. Humphrey North-South Fellows Program, the Institute of International Education and the Council on International Education. With the departure of David C. Larsen in 1988, James N. Gehlar became CIE’s Acting Director and later its second Director. Internal restructuring in 1991 gave CIE an Office of International Programming (which included the I-House), an Office of International Scholar Services, an Office of International Student Services and a Programs Abroad Office. The number of full-time staff members rose to twelve, half of them clerical and half professional.
A 1992 decision to expand the UT Knoxville College of Law had a dramatic impact upon CIE. The existing main College of Law building was to be completely renovated and a much larger addition would be constructed next door, precisely upon the site of the second International House. Not only would UT Knoxville need to make provision for a new I-House but, by coincidence, CIE’s offices would simultaneously also have to be moved because its Aconda Court space was required as “surge” space for College of Law staff during the construction period.
In the spring of 1994, CIE offices moved to their current location, a renovated space in the “G” section of Melrose Hall, a residence hall constructed in 1948 in the heart of campus and next door to the new John C. Hodges Library. CIE staff made a transition from working on a cramped single floor in Aconda Court to four more spacious floors in their own free-standing portion of the residence hall.
In the fall semester of the same year, 1994, ground was broken for the construction of UT Knoxville’s third International House. Thanks to the Student Government Association’s decision to allocate $1.3 million from Student Activity Fee funds to construction and furnishing, the university was to have its first purpose-built I-House (the second I-House had closed its doors early that same summer, moving a semblance of its operations to a single room in the “Down Under” recreational area in the lowest level of the University center building).
CIE Staff moved into the new I-House on Friday, December 15, 1995, and first opened the facility’s doors to the public on the following Monday, December 18. The formal and ceremonial opening of the structure was celebrated on Wednesday, February 7, 1996, the event having twice been postponed by a series of winter storms that hobbled business and industry throughout the eastern third of the US. The third (and present) I-House is a 10,000 square foot facility situated among residence halls, adjacent to the John C. Hodges Library and along sidewalks that are daily trod by perhaps a third of UT Knoxville’s student population.
The third International House is across Melrose Avenue from CIE’s Melrose Hall offices. Although Melrose Avenue is a much smaller and less busy road than the four-lane Cumberland Avenue, the present geographic separation of the two facilities is quite similar to that of their predecessors in the 1980s and early 1990s. During the planning for moving both the I-House and CIE offices, there was active discussion about whether to place both functions under a single roof. It was decided to keep the I-House as a distinct, always welcoming place, psychologically separate for international students and scholars from CIE’s administrative offices. Because CIE staff on both sides of the street work closely, however, there is no administrative distinction.
[1] Volunteer Moments: Vignettes of the History of The University of Tennessee, 1794-1994, Office of the University Historian. The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, 1994.
